Vocations
father james c. hudgins
No doubt about it, the most common question I am asked as a priest is “why did you decide to become a priest?” The quizzical look on the questioner’s face still baffles me. I’ve never been able to figure out whether they think that I must’ve been absolutely crazy to do this, or whether they’re genuinely intrigued as to what it feels like to get a call from God.
It was, more than anything, a very ordinary experience. I received no vision, no engraved invitation, no one knocked me off my horse. It was an unglamorous, long, tough, agonizing decision that I wrestled with for about eight years.
The call to the priesthood is different for everyone. Some guys in the seminary must have been born wearing a collar. They told me that as kids they used to “play mass” with Necco wafers. Not me. I went in kicking and screaming. When I was a kid, the only thing in the world I wanted to do was fly jets. The idea of the priesthood came to me first like a persistent, nagging, relentless thought that wouldn’t give up. The idea first dawned upon me at the age of ten, but didn’t last long. I fought it off, because I thought being a priest wasn’t very “cool.” It surfaced again at about age 19, and I still wasn’t comfortable with it.
And I used to pray to God, “listen, I’ll do whatever you want with my life, except that!” But as I wrestled with the idea, there was an extraordinary experience—the more I accepted the idea, the more I surrendered to it, the more I discovered an incredible sense of peace and joy like nothing else I’d ever experienced before in my life. There were times when my mind was made up to go into the seminary, then a month later I would change it.
Yes. I had a serious girlfriend. In fact, I was convinced at one point that I would marry her. Somehow though, it left me hollow. Something was missing, and I didn’t know exactly what it was.
I was pre-med at Dartmouth. I figured, “I don’t have to be a priest to help people. I can be a doctor. There are lots of things I can do.” Somehow the idea of “doing” was insufficient. What I “did” was not as important as who I was supposed to “be.” I began to pray, “God, if this is who you want me to be, then please place the desire in my heart.” And he did. I began to surrender more and more to the peace, joy, and excitement of totally trusting God, and handing my life over to him. The more I did that, the more I began to ask myself, “what was I ever worried about in the first place?” I entered the seminary in 1992, and was ordained for the Arlington Diocese in 1998.
I would be lying if I said it was easy. But nothing worth having ever comes cheap. I trusted in three things to help me: the power of daily prayer, especially in front of the Blessed Sacrament; the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the consecration to her according to St. Louis deMontfort; and the guidance of priests who had earned my respect. To anyone reading this who is thinking about becoming a priest, I can’t recommend anything else more highly.